Papiamento is a creole language derived from either Portuguese[3] or Spanish with vocabulary influences from African languages, English, Dutch, and Arawak native languages.[4] Papiamento has two main dialects: Papiamento, spoken primarily on Aruba; and Papiamentu, spoken primarily on Bonaire and Curaçao.

The historical origins of Papiamento are still not very well known. It is disputed whether Papiamento originated from Portuguese or from Spanish. A summary of the century-long debate on Papiamento's origins is provided in Jacobs (2009a).[5]

Historical constraints, core vocabulary and grammatical features that Papiamento shares with Cape Verdean Creole suggest that the basic ingredients are Portuguese, and that other influences occurred at a later time (17th and 18th century, respectively). The name of the language itself comes from papear ("to chat", "to talk"), a word present in Portuguese and colloquial Spanish; compare with Papiá Kristang ("Christian talk"), a Portuguese-based creole of Malaysia and Singapore, and the Cape Verdean Creole word papiâ ("to talk"), or to Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba) "papiar" - to talk excessively (but also, "to eat": "papar" is Portuguese kid term for "to eat"). Spain claimed dominion over the islands in the 15th century, but made little use of them. In 1634, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) took possession of the islands, deporting most of the small remaining Arawak and Spanish population to the continent, and turned them into the hub of the Dutch slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean.

The first evidence of widespread use of Papiamento in Aruba can be seen though the Curaçao official documents in the early 18th century. In the 19th century, most materials in the islands were written in Papiamento including Roman Catholic schoolbooks and hymnals. The first Papiamento newspaper was published in 1871 and titled "Civilisado" (The Civilizer). "Civilizado" is Spanish and Portuguese for "civilized" but can also be understood as a suppressed final "r" in the word "Civilizador" (Civilizer).

There are various local development theories. One such theory proposes that Papiamento developed in the Caribbean from an original Portuguese-African pidgin used for communication between African slaves and Portuguese slavetraders, with later Dutch and Spanish (and even some Aruac) influences.

The Judaeo-Portuguese population of the ABC islands increased substantially after 1654, when the Portuguese recovered the Dutch-held territories in Northeast Brazil – causing most of the Portuguese-speaking Jews in those lands to flee from religious persecution. The precise role of Sephardic Jews in the early development is unclear, but it is certain that Jews play a prominent role in the later development of Papiamento. Many early residents of Curaçao were Sephardic Jews either from Portugal, Spain, or Portuguese Brazil. Therefore, it can be assumed that Judaeo-Spanish was brought to the island of Curaçao, where it gradually spread to other parts of the community. As the Jewish community became the prime merchants and traders in the area, business and everyday trading was conducted in Papiamento with some Ladino influences. While various nations owned the island and official languages changed with ownership, Papiamento became the constant language of the residents.

A more recent theory holds that the origins of Papiamento lie in the Afro-Portuguese creoles that arose almost a century earlier, in the west coast of Africa and in the Cape Verde islands. From the 16th to the late 17th century, most of the slaves taken to the Caribbean came from Portuguese trading posts ("factories") in those regions. Around those ports there developed several Portuguese-African pidgins and creoles, such as Guinea-Bissau Creole, Mina, Cape Verdean Creole, Angolar, and Guene. The latter bears strong resemblances to Papiamento. According to this theory, Papiamento was derived from those pre-existing pidgins/creoles, especially Guene, which were brought to the ABC islands by slaves and/or traders from Cape Verde and West Africa.

Some specifically claim that the Afro-Portuguese mother language of Papiamentu arose from a mixture of the Mina pidgin/creole (a mixture of Cape Verdean pidgin/creole with Twi) and the Angolar creole (derived from languages of Angola and Congo). Proponents of this theory of Papiamento contend that it can easily be compared and linked with other Portuguese creoles, especially the African ones (namely Forro, Guinea-Bissau Creole, and the Cape Verdean Creole). For instance, Compare mi ("I" in Cape Verdean Creole and Papiamento) or bo(meaning you in both creoles). Mi is from the Portuguese mim (pronounced [mĩ]) "me", and bo is from Portuguese vós "you".[6] The use of "b" instead of "v" is very common in the African Portuguese Creoles.

Papiamento is, in some degree, intelligible with Cape Verdean creoles and could be explained by the immigration of Portuguese Sephardic Jews from Cape Verde to these Caribbean islands, although this same fact could also be used by dissenters to explain a later Portuguese influence on an already existing Spanish-based creole.[7]

Another comparison is the use of the verb ta and taba ta from vernacular Portuguese tá (an aphesis of estar, "to be" or está, "it is") with verbs where Portuguese does and with others where it does not use it: "Mi ta + verb" or "Mi taba ta + verb", also the rule in the São Vicente Creoleand other BarlaventoCape Verdean Creoles . These issues can also be seen in other Portuguese Creoles (Martinus 1996; see also Fouse 2002 and McWhorter 2000), but some are also found in colloquial Spanish.

Current research on the origins of Papiamentu focuses specifically on the linguistic and historical relationships between Papiamentu and Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole as spoken on the Santiago island of Cape Verde and in Guinea-Bissau and Casamance. Elaborating on comparisons done by Martinus (1996) and Quint (2000),[8] Jacobs (2008,[9] 2009a, 2009b[10]) defends the hypothesis that Papiamentu is a relexified offshoot of an early Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole variety, transferred from Senegambia to Curaçao in the second half of the 17th century, a period in which the Dutch controlled the harbour of Gorée, just below the tip of the Cape Verde Peninsula. On Curaçao, this variety, better known as Papiamentu, underwent internal changes as well as contact-induced changes at all levels of the grammar (though particularly in the lexicon) due to contact with Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Dutch as well as with a variety of Kwa and Bantu languages. These changes notwithstanding, the morpho-syntactic framework of Papiamentu is still remarkably close to that of the Upper Guinea Creoles of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau/Casamance.

Papiamento has two main dialects: Papiamento in Aruba and Papiamentu in Curaçao and Bonaire. Although the Papiamentu in Curaçao and Bonaire are largely the same, there are still minor differences.

Spoken (Aruban) Papiamento sounds much more Spanish. The most apparent difference between the two dialects is given away in the name difference. Whereas Curaçao and Bonaire opted for a phonologically based spelling, Aruba uses an etymologically based spelling. Many words in Aruba end with "o" while that same word ends with "u" in Curaçao and Bonaire. And even on Curaçao, the use of the u-ending is still more pronounced among the Sephardic Jewish population. Similary, there is also a difference between the usage of "k" in Curaçao and Bonaire and "c" in Aruba.

There are dialects that exist in the island itself. An example is the Aruban word, "dolor" ("pain"), which is the same in Curaçao's version, but written differently. The R is silent in certain parts of the island. It is also written without the R.

In addition to the vowels listed above, schwa also occurs in Papiamento. The letter e is pronounced as schwa in the final unstressed syllables of words such as agradabel and komader.[15] Other vowels in unstressed syllables can become somewhat centralized (schwa-like) in rapid casual speech.

Papiamento is one of only two[citation needed] languages worldwide that distinguish both stress and tone and is the only language in the world known to use both stress and prosodic accent.

Polysyllabic words that end in vowels are stressed on the next-to-last syllable; most words ending in consonants are stressed on the final syllable. There are exceptions. When a word deviates from these rules, the stressed vowel should be indicated by an acute accent mark. The accent marks are often omitted in casual writing.[16]

Papiamento words have distinct tone patterns. According to recent linguistic research, there are two classes of words: those that typically have rising pitch on the stressed syllable, and those that typically have falling pitch on the stressed syllable.[17] The latter category includes most of the two-syllable verbs in the language. Any given word's tone contours may change depending on discursive factors such as whether the sentence is affirmative, interrogative, or imperative.[18]

-In words of more than three syllables, grammatical tone or accent will fall on the last stressed syllable. The first stressed syllable receives the opposite tone for contrast: compare noun 'kini-kini' (kini-KI-ni): falcon with adverb 'poko-poko' (PO-ko-poko): slowly.

-An adverb has rising tone, so a following adjective receives high tone (ex. 'masha BON' very good).

!!! - The adverbs 'bon' (good) and 'mal' (bad), even though they are adjectives, in grammar will always have adverbial, rising tone character (ex. 'bon ha-SI:' well-done). They will always behave like adverbs, even when they qualify nouns (ex. 'bon DI-a:' good day). They behave like adverbs even when doubled for emphasis ('bon-BON:' very good).

(Note: in all above examples, primary stress remains on the second word, while secondary stress remains on the first word, independently of tone changes. It is thus more accurate to transcribe 'PA-lu hal-tu' and 'bira RONT', with bold typing indicating stress and CAPITAL LETTERS indicating high tone syllables. Unstressed syllables' tone is dependent on contact syllables.)

-The particle of negation 'no' always receives rising tone: the following verb is inevitably raised in pitch: compare 'mi ta PA-pia' (I speak) and 'mi no TA PA-pia' (I do not speak). This negating pitch-raise is crucial and is retained even after contraction of the particle in informal speech: 'mi'n TA papia' ("I don't speak")

It is theorised that the unusual presence of both stress and tone in Papiamentu is an inheritance of African languages (which use tone) and Portuguese (which has stress)

Most of the vocabulary is derived from Spanish and Portuguese and most of the time the real origin is unknown due to the great similarity between the two Iberian languages and the adaptations required by Papiamentu. A 100-Swadesh List of Papiamentu can be found online[19]Linguistic studies have shown that roughly two thirds of the words in Papiamentu's present vocabulary are of Iberian origin, a quarter are of Dutch origin,and some of Native American origin and the rest come from other tongues. A recent study by Buurt & Joubert inventarised several hundred words of indigenous Arawak origins[20]

Examples of words of Iberian and Roman, Latin origin, which are impossible to label as either Portuguese or Spanish:

por fabor/sea asina di = please - Spanish/Portuguese, por favor

señora = mrs, madam - Spanish, señora; 'Portuguese, senhora;

kuá? = which? Spanish, cuál?; Portuguese, qual?;

Kuantu? = how much? - Spanish, ¿cuánto?; Portuguese, quanto?;

While the presence of word-final /u/ can easily be traced to Portuguese, the diphthongization of some vowels is characteristic of Spanish. The use of /b/ (rather than /v/) is difficult to interpret; although the two are separate phonemes in standard Portuguese, they merge in the dialects of northern Portugal, just like they do in Spanish. Also, a sound-shift could have occurred in the direction of Spanish, whose influence on Papiamento came later than that of Portuguese.

Other words can have dual origin, and certainly dual influence. For instance: subrino (nephew): sobrinho in Portuguese, sobrino in Spanish. The pronunciation of "o" as /u/ is traceable to Portuguese, while the use of "n" instead of "nh" (IPA /ɲ/) in the ending "-no", relates to Spanish.